Portrait of the First Black President and His Wife Unveiled

The National Portrait Gallery of America for the first time in its 56-year history has commissioned two Afro American artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald to paint the first couple, Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, the first black President of the USA. The Portraits are unveiled recently.

There is little doubt that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were the most stylish and sophisticated first couple since the Kennedys and are as powerful individuals in their respective roles. They choose a different painter for themselves each, thus breaking the tradition of commissioning official portraits from one always white and always male artist.  They were the first African-American couple in the White House too.

Barack and Michelle Obama chose Wiley and Sherald after considering portfolios of some 20 artists. The Obamas interviewed a few at the White House but finally decided on the two contemporary artists with whom they each felt a connection.

Sherald is known for her painting portraying everyday life on ordinary clothes, with striking features with shades of gray and pops of color throughout the canvas. On the other hand 41 years old Kehinde Wiley, is known for his larger-than-life riffs on Western art.

The unveiling of the portraits was held in the presence of eminent dignitaries where the former President of USA, Obama said that he has observed Wiley takes “extraordinary care and precision and vision in recognizing the beauty and the grace and the dignity of people who are so often invisible in our lives and put them on a grand stage, on a grand scale.”

It may be a coincidence but Artist Wiley’s life is quite similar to that of his subject former President Barack Obama. Wiley was born in Los Angeles in the late 70s and raised by a single mother as the hip-hop era began to take shape. As he was from a poor family, his mother engaged him in art. On weekends as children, he and his twin brother would travel by bus to classes at a conservatory on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles. At the age of 12 years Wiley was among a group of 50 students who were taken to Russia to study its language and art. He went on to study at the Art Institute of San Francisco and earned a master’s degree in painting at Yale.

Wiley is raised by his mother single handedly without his father and but later in his life he traveled to Nigeria to meet him, which is a parallel between artist and his subject, Barack Obama.

On the other hand Amy Sherald is a rising star. In 2016 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, beating 2,500 other entries. She got David Driskell Prize recently from the High Museum of Art.

Amy Sherald’s approach to the First Lady’s official portrait was true to her artistic method. Obama is styled in a Milly dress that reminded Sherald of the patterns of Gee’s Bend, a black community in Alabama famous for its brilliant quilts. While describing her portrayal of Michelle Obama, Sherald said, “she is a human being with intellect, integrity, confidence, and compassion. And the paintings I create aspire to express these attributes, which is a message of humanity.”

In Sherald’s portrait, the former First Lady’s silvery skin glows against a pale blue backdrop. The singularity of the piece asks the viewer to contemplate the strength and presence of Michelle Obama both as she was in the White House, and as she remains in the hearts of the many who look up to her.

In Wiley’s portrait who is a colorist, Barack Obama seated in an early 19th century American mahogany chair, his body hunched forward, elbows on his thighs, his hands relaxed, but his posture and face alert, as if ready to rise. The president's skin is a range of browns, the orange tint of which is intensified by the chromatic interplay with the fresh bright green of the foliage surrounding him.

The remarkable aspect of the portrait is its leafy background, which at first looks like the visual equivalent of floral wallpaper, but is in fact, as visually engaging as the figure. As background Wiley used wide variety of leaf shapes, which according to him indicates a composition of different leaves and not a single vine, from which grow an equally variable group of flowers. Super-smart people will discover that many of these are symbolic the blue flower of Kenya, where the president's father was born and died, a flower from Hawaii, where Obama spent much of his young years and another flower from Chicago, where he first met Michelle and his started his political life.

The portraits now viral on social sites for their color and the portraying has raised $500,000 in private funds for the gallery from benefactors including Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Judith Kern and Kent Whealy.